A Clutch Play for Hammitt CEO's Life

Written by Diane Krieger | Photographed by Michael Neveux 

Even as paramedics loaded Tony Drockton into the ambulance, the luxury handbag kingpin had no idea he was in grave danger. 

“I was still in a great mood. I’m like, ‘Wait, we have to get a photo. I’ve never ridden in an ambulance.’ I was laughing. I didn’t think I was going to die,” says Drockton, who is CEO and co-founder of Hammitt, a Hermosa Beach-based luxury handbag brand with $35 million in annual sales.

Two hours later, Drockton’s blood pressure was a dangerously low 47/24. His hemoglobin stood at 4 grams per deciliter. The healthy Hb range for adult males is 14 to 17 gm/dL. Drockton had been quietly bleeding out for days.

“They told me I wouldn’t have made it 24 hours at that blood level,” he says.

The cause: gastric ulcers brought on by the Helicobacter pylori (H. piylori) bacterium, left to fester undetected in his gut for years. This common pathogen infects about two-thirds of the world’s population, but in only 10% to 15% of patients does it lead to gastrointestinal disease, such as peptic ulcer or stomach cancer.

Drockton, 57, had long experienced “stomach problems” but mistakenly attributed his intermittent symptoms (sharp pains, gas and belching) to some unknown food allergy. Perhaps coffee, fried food or onions? He stoically endured the discomfort, periodically changing his diet and self-medicating with over-the-counter antacids.

But last year the pain grew constant—even on an empty stomach. Then in mid-October, Drockton felt lightheaded during a rooftop party he hosted for his graduate alma mater, Bowling Green State University. The next day, diarrhea set in. His stool was black—a telltale sign of upper gastrointestinal bleeding, but Drockton didn’t know that.

By day three he was blacking out. Convinced he had COVID-19, Drockton decided to ride it out in bed. His significant other, Shelley Montanez, urged him to go to the hospital. So did a nurse friend who dropped by to check on him. But Drockton wouldn’t budge.

On day five, he passed out in the bathroom, waking up on the cold floor to find he’d chipped two front teeth. He crawled back to bed and slept.

When Montanez stopped by to check on him the next morning, she had to shake him awake. He passed out again on the way to her car. Drockton’s Manhattan Beach family physician had already called the fire department by the time they drove to his office.

Montanez insisted they go to Torrance Memorial. A sales rep for medical device manufacturer Philips, she knows the hospital and its physicians well and vouched for the high standard of compassionate care Drockton would receive there.

“She’s actually the reason I’m alive, because Torrance Memorial saved my life,” he says. It took eight units of blood—over three days—and a steady flow of intravenous proton-pump-inhibitors to stabilize Drockton.

Bleeding ulcers are among the most common GI conditions that send patients to the emergency room, “but it’s uncommon for them to cause a critical level of blood loss,” says Adrienne Lenhart, MD, the Torrance Memorial gastroenterologist who treated Drockton at the hospital. “It became life-threatening in Tony’s case.”

The endoscopy performed by Dr. Lenhart showed two large ulcers in the stomach and small intestines and several smaller areas of inflammation. “All of those, based on the biopsy we took, were secondary to H. pylori infection,” she says.

Drockton calls his emergency stay at Torrance Memorial “a great experience. The nurses were amazingly attentive. They were funny, always laughing. And Dr. Lenhart was wonderful. She explained everything.”

They established a bantering relationship over a college football rivalry. “I found out right before going in for my scope she went to Michigan, which is our arch enemy,” says Drockton, an Ohio State superfan. “O-H,” he chanted bravely as they wheeled him into the surgery, but Lenhart refused to take up the Buckeyes’ call-and-response. Afterward, however, she stopped by his bed in the recovery area, leaned over and whispered in his ear: “I-O.” 

Once diagnosed, the treatment was simple: a two-week course of antibiotics to knock out the

H. pylori and a month on proton pump inhibitors like Protonix and Prilosec to heal the ulcers.

“It’s crazy how long I put up with it,” he says, referring to years of unnecessary gastric distress. “Dr. Lenhart said I probably had H. pylori for decades, and the bacteria finally ganged up on me and created these ulcers.”

His recovery was rapid. Less than a month after his near-death experience, Drockton hosted a

major holiday sales event for Hammitt. No one there would have guessed how sick he’d been.

“Since then,” he says, “I have had no issues at all. Zero. No stomach pains. No bleeding. I like to joke  I must have gotten the blood of some 20-year-old, because my energy was amazing. I felt great. I was like, ‘How do I get more of this blood?’”

Joking aside, Drockton says, “I really feel lucky to be alive. It’s almost like I got a second life.”

His loved ones—including Montanez, son Riley Drockton and nephew Daniel Drockton—have paid it forward by becoming blood donors at the hospital, where all donations stay on-site and are reserved for Torrance Memorial patients.